St Paul spent three months on the
island of Mljet in Croatia

Abstract. An important book by Ignjat Đurđević
published in 1730 in Venice was released in 2008, in The Year of St
Paul, i.e. two thousand years after the birth of St Paul. It is the
Croatian translation of Ignjat Đurđević's monograph written in elite
Latin language, in which he proves that St Paul spent three months on
the island of Mljet in Croatia, and not the island of Malta.

Saint Paul had shipwreck
on Croatian island of Mljet, and not on Malta. This is the subject of
the monumental book written in elite Latin language by Ignjat Đurđević,
published in Venice in 1730. Ignjat Đurđevic was Croatian Baroque
writer from the city of Dubrovnik. The island of Mljet is not far from
Dubrovnik.

It was Dr. Miho Demović
who initiated an important project of Croatian translation of Ignjat
Đurđević's 1730 monograph. Đurđević's book proves that St Paul's
shipwreck occured on Croatian island of
Mljet, not on Malta.For example, Malta is not in Adria (the Adriatic
Sea), but in Lybian sea.

Publication of this book
was a great event in 2008, proclaimed The Year of Saint Paul by pope
Benedict XVIth.

The editor in chief of
Croatian translation is Dr. Miho Demović, outstanding Croatian
historian and musicologist. The 2008 translation was printed in
hardcover, and the first 104 pp contain Scholarly introduction written
by Dr. Miho Demović in Croatian and English:

The Croatian version of
Demović's introductory study is available on pp 5*-60*, and in English
on pp 61*-104*. This web page is based mainly on Miho Demović's study.

The following 360 pp of
the book contain Croatian translation of Đurđević's original treatise
published in elite Latin. The book contains several indices: Index of
cited authors, Index of terms, and Index of photos.

Đurđević's 1730 book was
translated from elite Latin into Croatian by Dr. Jozo Marević,
Dubrovnik. Elite Latin is not easy to read even to those with solid
background in Latin language. Therefore the book was accessible only to
a narow circle of top scholars. Now with Croatian translation of the
book and the accompaning scholarly study published in English, the book
became available to much borader public. We extend our congratulations
to Dr. Miho Demović and all of his collaborators for their painstaking
and important work.

As Dr. Miho Demović
stressed,

neither I nor the
publishers had any intention whatsoever of perusading people to accept
the author's opinion that the actual location of Saint Paul's schpwreck
was indeed the island of Mljet (although, we personally, deeply and
confidently trust it as a fact). The only intention we had was to point
out the event as an interesting excerpt from the old Ragusan political,
religious and literal history.

Until recently it was
believed that the first person to identify the location of Saint Paul's
shipwreck near Mljet was the father of European historigraphy, the
Greek emperor and historian Constanine Porphyrogenitus (905-959) who,
describing the south Dalmatian islands in his work "On Administering
the Empire", wrote the following:

Another big island is
Mljet. It was described by Saint Luke in the Acts where he calls it
Melita. Saint Paul was there bitten by the viper but he shook it off
into the fire where it was burned.

However, scholars have
recently discovered new inforation in The Geography of Ananias of
Širak, written between 592-636 AD, which confirms that Saint
Paul stayed in Dalmatia following a shipwreck that happened on the
Adriatic island of Melita (Mljet).

After Porphyrogenitus,
the 16th century Italian historian of Dubrovnik (Ragusa) Serafino
Razzi, Dominican and for a while Vicar of Capitular of the Ragusan
Metropolitan see, claimed the same. He set forth the following:

At the end of this
presentation on the island of Mljet, I shall tell you that many serious
writers think that this Ragusan Mljet was the very island where Saint
Paul the Apostle escaped after the shipwreck and there he was bitten by
a viper as written in chapter 28 of the Acts. One of them is the
honorable cardinal Gaetano.

Razzi thought that the
shipwreck couldn not have taken place in Malta because Malta was
situated in the African, instead of in the Adriatic Sea.

Đurđević claimed at the
beginning of his book the following

I say and I claim that
before the chivalrous Hospitaller Order of St John moved to African
Melita, the glory of Saint Paul's shipwreck site had been granted,
without any hesitation or doubt, to Illyrian Melita.

It is interesting that
while Malta was under the Spanish government, Đurđević was supported in
his views by both English and French scholars. However, when Malta came
under the English protectorate, the circumstances changed and the
English writers stood up for the Maltese option. Something similar
happened to the French writers when Malta was conquered by Napolen
Bonaparte.

Translation into
English from Đurđević's translation into Latin (D.®.):

27It
was the forteenth night, and we were being driven about in the ADRIA by
the storm. About midnight the sailors suspected that we were getting
close to land etc.

And the
contemporary English translation of the Bible changed the original
Greek and Latin texts (see ACTS 27, 27) as follows:

27It
was the forteenth night, and we were being driven about in the Mediterranean
(sic!) by the storm.

Obviously, the
translators were aware that Malta is not in the Adriatic, so they
simply changed the original Adria
into "Mediterranean".

In Chapter
28, 1 of the Acts in the
Bible we have the first sentence indicating Melita as the island of St
Paul's shipwreck, and in the 16th century the name of MELITA was simply
changed to Malta.

Đurđević's
translation from Vulgata of St Jerome:

1Et
cum evasissemus, tunc cognovimus quia MELITA insula vocatur.

Đurđević's
translation from Greek original into Latin:

1Et
servati tunc cognoverunt, quia MELITA insula vocabatur.

Translation into
Croatian from Đurđević's translation into Latin:

1Tek
kad se spasismo, doznadosmo da se otok zove MELITA.

Translation into
English from Đurđević's translation into Latin (D.®.):

1When
we were safely ashore, we learnt that the island was called MELITA.

Issuing of Croatian
translation of Bartol Đurđević's monumental book was made possible by a
generous finantial support of prof. Pavica
Šundrica-Šperk. She is retired professor of
English language at a Dubrovnik high school.

Dr. Miho Demović
initiated organizing a conference in Dubrovnik in November 2008,
dedicated to Đurđević's monograph. The participants explored numerous
proofs, direct and indirect, that St Paul spent three months on the
island of Mljet in Croatia, and not on Malta.

Some of Đurđević's
Croatian texts are available via Wikipedia.
He was a tri-lingual poet: he wrote in Croatian, Italian and Latin.

A result of centuries old
tradition of St. Paul in Croatia is that there are as meny as 320
versions of Croatian second names based on the name of "Paul". It is
estimated that about 10000 people in Croatia are bearing such second
names.